Cards by Mary Lawton

Mary Lawton is a Houston-based cartoonist and painter. Her cartoons have appeared in many publications for more than three decades. Currently, they include The New Yorker, Funny Times, and Narrative. She appears Thursdays in Six Chix, a comic for King Features Syndicate.

Card somebody special with the gift of good cheer and great laughter, by giving them one of the greeting cards in this funny, fabulous, fantastic, sarcastic, sassy, witty and wily collection. Whether the occasion is Easter, Christmas, Birthday, Father's Day or Mother's Day, there's a happy, colorful, hilarious missive to meet the need to greet garrulously.

As brilliantly illustrated and captioned on these clever cards: a yellow chick motors around in a pink car; a woman dares some cowboys in a western saloon to call her "ma'am" just one more time; plumbers convene for a circle crack-up; a café society sitting lady gives thanks with a friend that she doesn't have to see her family during the holidays; and two flabby armed angels fly high in the fluffy, blissful, heavenly clouds compared to their more fit compatriots.

Choose any cute, colorful, jokey card in this vast, vivid and varied collection, and you'll be delivering laugh-out-loud visual and verbiage entertainment that will be greatly appreciated by anyone on the rapturous receiving end.